The Dress Fits

When I read “My Favorite Color” in the July 2015 Lifeline, my heart lifted. I too want to share the joy of living and the freedom that I have found in OA.

In a few months, my oldest granddaughter will marry. Rather than spending months fretting over what to wear to the wedding, I knew immediately what I will wear: a lovely silk dress with hand painted flowers, one that has been in my closet and that I bought for some other happy occasion more than ten years ago.

Thanks to OA and my Higher Power, I know the dress will fit and will be entirely appropriate for me. Like the writer of “My Favorite Color,” I too have been given the gift of being my authentic self.

Forty-one years ago and with thirteen months in OA, I attended my niece’s wedding. I weighed the least I had weighed since I was 10 years old, and I wore a gorgeous red gown that I made myself. I was thin but not in recovery (my disease was doing just fine, thank you). I remember pacing up and down in front of the enormous dessert table and stressing over which one (just one, of course) I could eat, while the festivities went on around me. In the end I surrendered to my disease, ate everything that called out to me, and took home leftovers, which I ate that night.

That dress is no longer with me, nor is that waiflike young woman. What is with me is my Twelve Step program of physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery. I recently celebrated the forty-second anniversary of the day I came to my forever home in OA. In a few weeks, it will be thirty-seven years since the morning I woke up knowing it was time to surrender my life to the power greater than myself.

I now live one day at a time as I experience the joy of knowing, even with small things like the dress for my granddaughter’s wedding, that I am following the path set before me to the best of my understanding — and the dress will still fit!

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